In Limbo
by VeIaRrGtOh
Summary: Faithful Penelope awaits the return of Odysseus, avoiding suitors and always hopeful. But how long can a queen stand it all? Simon Armitage's adaptation of The Odyssey, Penelope's POV. Waiting in limbo, the queen of Ithaca has a lot to think about...


_Note: Hello! This is a oneshot featuring Penelope, wife of Odysseus, as she awaits the return of her husband from the war at troy and his Odyssey. The version of _The Odyssey_ that I worked with is the radio drama dialogue arranged by Simon Armitage. He was commissioned by BBC Radio to arrange the epic poem into a script, and his work was performed on the radio over three nights. Pick it up and read it sometime, it makes _The Odyssey_ very enjoyable. _

_I know there are fanfiction works that feature this same idea of Penelope waiting, but this was something very personal that I felt I needed to write. I really stepped into Penelope's gladiator sandals and walked around in them for a while, you know?_

_I hope you enjoy. _

* * *

There he is, at it again. The balladeer is singing a song about Helen of Troy. He sings of her beauty, her infidelity, and the lengths the Greeks went to in order to bring her back home. She upended the lives of thousands of Argives, myself included. She is the daughter of Zeus. She is more beautiful than any other woman living. She is my cousin. And I don't want to hear anything else about her.

I don't want to hear about Troy, and I don't want to hear about the war, or the heroes, or their stories. I've heard enough. I've heard the stories of Greek warriors who survived: Menelaus King of Sparta, Agamemnon the King of Kings, pious King Nestor. I've heard from the survivors the stories of those who died: proud swift-footed Achilles, noble Hector of Troy, mighty Ajax. And then I've seen their surprise when they learn that clever Odysseus, king of Ithaca and my husband, has not yet returned from the victory at Troy.

The lovely melody is bringing me to tears. More tears than I want or could ever handle. I need to stop this now. I march from my room, my maid trailing behind me, confused. I stop at the balcony overlooking the enormous, brightly-lit banquet hall and stare down at the scene before me. The suitors are there, the men who wait either for news of Odysseus' death or for my stubborn will to break. They wish to marry me, and claim Odysseus' throne. The very thought of marrying any of these vulgar men makes me shudder. The suitors are gorging themselves at the banquet table, as the leeches always do. The balladeer is singing a verse:

"How many lives for Helen of Troy?

How many lives, How many lives,

How many husbands and how many wives

To bring her back over the ocean?"

He stops when he sees me staring at him from the top of the stairs, and the men around him listening jump to their feet and face me. Telemachus is there, looking as if deep in thought. The suitor Antinous is the first to speak.

"Penelope. You grace us with your presence." He is insincere and almost sounds bored. His pale, brittle fingers grasp his wine goblet, which he swirls absentmindedly as he half-looks at me.

Eurymachus, twice the size of the others, is next to add his sycophantic snivel. "You honor us."

Timid Amphinomous, handsome, yet small in stature and volume, is the only one to speak with sincerity in his voice: "Here's a seat by the fire and a cloak for your shoulders."

I ignore them. "It was music that stirred me."

The balladeer is gleeful and goofy, not understanding my irritable tone. "Thank you, My Lady!"

"Troubled me, I mean," I say to him, slower this time. "Roused me out of the comfort of sleep. Have you only the one song?"

"No My Lady," he states, abashed. "Thousands." Of course he does.

"Then sing another. Not the song of Troy," I tell him. "It climbed my stairs, rising like smoke, seeping under the door and bringing me to tears. Let me sleep. I'm tired."

I spare one look at the suitors before turning to go back to my room. I don't have the energy for them tonight. However once I am out of their sight, I stop and back into a shadowy corner of the hallway to listen as they start to talk.

"She's an icy one," Eurymachus mumbles, but it's loud enough for me to hear. My heart is sinking fast with shame and embarrassment as I listen.

"She'll melt," rat-like Antinous replies.

"I know what I'd be like after twenty years with my legs crossed. I'd be at boiling point." Eurymachus says, and I feel my face flush and grow red.

"Beautiful, though. Standing there at the head of the stairs. Against the evening light." says Amphinomous.

"She takes her wedding vows too seriously. She takes her fidelity too far." Eurymachus cuts in.

"That's why we want her, isn't it? That's why we're queuing up for her hand. We want that faithfulness for ourselves." Amphinomous is sweet, even when he is too naïve to understand he's being rude.

"And everything that comes with it!" Eurymachus says.

"Property." Antinous chimes in, and the two begin bouncing ideas and dreams off each other.

"Weaponry."

"Lakes of wine."

"Herds of cattle."

"Gold!"

"Fame!"

"My intentions are entirely honorable." Amphinomous clarifies.

"So are mine!" Eurymachus laughs. "It's just that I've got some very big intentions!" He and Antinous share a laugh over that. How juvenile.

"It's like a land of plenty waiting behind a locked gate," Antinous says. "One day she'll say yes, and give one man amongst us the key. The key to paradise. When she stood there just now, with the sun behind her, illuminated, the last rays of dusk making a filament of her body beneath her dress, which of us didn't steal a glimpse of what lies ahead, on the other side?" I give an unheard gasp of embarrassment, clapping my hands to my mouth.

Telemachus, not wanting to hear their conversation any longer, interrupts Antinous, shouting: "You suitors, camped out at our expense, gnawing your way like rats through our estate, I'll keep you fed and watered for as long as you stay – it's what society expects. But if there were justice in this world, Zeus would punish you for your gluttony, he'd put an end to your infinite appetites, and I for one, would give him endless thanks!"

Eurymachus brushes off my poor son's outburst, barely responding, "What's that bed-wetter whining about now?"

"Telemachus, what's gotten into you?" Antinous barks. "How dare you talk with such impertinence, as if the Gods had given you leave to speak?"

Telemachus is loud, but his bravado has faded slightly into uncertainty. "For as long as my father Odysseus is away, I'll be lord and master in this house, I'll be owner of all his hard-won fortunes and I'll speak as I please."

"Say what you will, the outcome of all this lies in the laps of the Gods, and there's nothing you can do to alter what they decide." Eurymachus says, bearing down on Telemachus with his size.

"Correct," snakelike Antinous adds. "Anyway, who was the visitor who arrived unannounced, then vanished into thin air? Another suitor, joining the long and winding queue, or just a tinker pushing some second-rate goods?"

I listen as they describe events that transpired before I arrived. My poor son is respectful and timid once again, put in his place by the Greek law that demands proper hospitality to a guest. "A friend of my father's," he says, defeated, but terse. "A merchant trading shore to shore. He stopped to pay his respects but when he set eyes on this vulgar scene he ran to catch the wind."

A friend of Odysseus' – it used to excite me every time someone came to Ithaca with the chance of news of my husband's fate or whereabouts. After ten years, and nothing new, I've grown accustomed to disappointment.

Antinous is speaking, reprimanding my son – if I were not so powerless, how I would have liked to wring his neck!

"That tone of voice again, Telemachus," he says. "Well, let me say this, if we have become debased there's only your mother to blame. There's a name for people like her. We could have been off in the wide world, lying beside any woman who took our fancy – but good Penelope keeps us hanging on. For nearly four years we've dangled on a string while she sends us encouraging nods and winks. We've invested too much time to just walk away."

I am burning with embarrassment again, and I start to shake when my brave son again rises to the occasion to protect my name.

"She is a faithful mother and wife!" Telemachus snaps.

"She a clever trickster as well," Antinous retorts. "What was it she said to us? 'All you who flatter me and are eager for my hand, first let me weave this shroud for Laertes, my father-in-law, who is frail and old.'"

Eurymachus joins the game in a sing-song adaption of my voice: "'What will the womenfolk think of me if he dies without a sheet to wind his royal body in?'"

"'When the weaving's done, when the shroud's complete, then I'll choose a man.' So we let her weave." Antinous says nastily. "Season after season, year after year we let her weave, until one of her maids whispered in my ear that what she stitched by day she unpicked at night. That's the kind of devious mind we're up against."

Telemachus is desperate. "She plays for time, holding out hope for my father's return. Who could blame her for that?"

Eurymachus' words slice through me: "She's a vixen. Cunning and sly."

"Telemachus, your mother is a prize worthy of any man-" Amphinomous sidles into the conversation too late for me to truly believe his words, but Antinous cuts across him.

"Burn this into your brain Telemachus: we'll not give up the chase, so the quicker you cut the apron strings and marry her off to whichever suitor she most deserves, the better for everyone concerned."

I can't take any more. I leave. Back to my room, to my bed, to my balcony, to a bit of privacy where I can allow a few of the unwanted tears their words stir in me to fall. And the worst part is that the tears come because their words are true.

All the while the unstoppable melody rings through my mind: "How many husbands and how many wives…"

* * *

Days later, Eurycleia comes to me with the news that Telemachus is gone. I can hardly be angry with her, she is so old, almost a mother or grandmother to me. She was here in the palace when I arrived, and I used to laugh at the idea that she will somehow still be here when I leave it for the final time. She is so annoying, and yet I need her presence, both because it is soothing to me and because it keeps me connected with reality. She lived her life nurturing Odysseus, and she therefore brings him closer to me somehow. But the words coming out of her mouth now are too much. I have been so patient for so long, sick with worry, and now my only other connection to Odysseus, my son Telemachus, is gone.

This can't be happening. I'm swooning, fainting, crying. Eurycleia catches me, strong still in her old age, and is reassuring me, speaking to me, but I can't hear her. All I can do is cry to her, "My son, my only son…"

I'm in a state. I can't see or hear anything. I've gone deaf and dumb and I'm being led around by the hand. At least it is Eurycleia's soft, wrinkled hand. Odysseus and Telemachus gone, just Eurycleia left, and when she is gone I'll be all alone.

* * *

I have so often begged for death. Never more than now, when all I had to live for are gone. Odysseus, Telemachus… the ones I loved most in this world are swept away from me by the harsh ocean.

Is it some rogue god that plagues and attacks the royal family of Ithaca, and the House of Laertes? If it is, I send my plea to that same god – end it. End the wrath that separates my family, or else end my life. Everything is gone.

* * *

The ocean breeze is comforting. It always has been. It seems to have been the one constant in my life, the breeze from childhood summers spent on the beaches of Sparta carrying into my first journey with Odysseus to our home in Ithaca. Now it makes its way to my palace balcony which I have so often frequented, scanning the horizon for any sign of a ship.

The breeze has become my only comfort since Telemachus left. My son, my only son… The very fact that he has left home of his own accord slaps me with the reality that he is a grown man; 19 years of age, and yet his father saw only the first few months of his life. I however, saw more. I saw him become a trouble-making toddler who pouted one moment then cried for his mother the next. Then he was a loud-mouthed, beautiful young boy, an awkward, quiet teenager, and finally a confident, handsome, kind, princely young man. Through all this I was able to teach him manners, responsibility, and compassion. But there are things my not-so-young son missed learning as he grew. He missed the lessons that only a father can teach a son. Oh, his tutors can teach him in language, history, rhetoric, science, and athletics. But he has been educated by mere mortals, rather than by his own father, who in many ways was the equal of a demi-god. Telemachus didn't learn Odysseus' best way to string a bow, or Odysseus' take on history, and he never learned to rule a kingdom just as Odysseus did. I am not angry at this, but rather filled with regret.

I recall, a few nights after Telemachus was born, Odysseus and I sitting by the baby's cradle. I have not seen Odysseus for nearly 20 years, but I will never forget the look on his face that night as he looked peacefully and proudly at his infant son and spoke quietly to me of all the things they would do together, and everything Telemachus would accomplish.

"He'll learn to fight by the time he's five," Odysseus had said, a mixture of excitement when he would turn to explain to me and tenderness when he reached into the cradle to take the baby into his muscular arms. "He'll be the best fighter, better than mighty Achilles," he said rocking his son gently, "But he'll be smart, too, like his father and mother. Oh he'll be the most clever and cunning of all the Greeks. Because that's what it takes," he added, strolling slowly around the nursery to the window as I watched, "That's what it takes to become a great warrior, and a great ruler, and a great man. A cunning mind, a worthy strength, and a noble heart."

He continued on cooing to the baby while I watched my two men, until Telemachus was asleep in his father's arms and Odysseus put him gently back in the cradle.

My favorite memory: the three of us together, happy, hopeful. That is what I cling to when my memories of Odysseus begin to fade.

And ever since, it has been just Telemachus and I. Two wayward souls missing a piece of our hearts, living to the best of our ability with what we have. I have tried to be both father and mother to Telemachus, but he is half-Odysseus, and needs Odysseus in his life. But we are there for each other: when he was a child, I was there to wipe his tears when he woke in the night with terrifying dreams, and he in turn would pad his little feet down the hall to my room when he heard me crying or calling out in sleep in the night and crawl into bed with me. Now that he is older he is my only defender from these suitors.

My heart would break to see Telemachus stand up to the suitors in the house, only to be beaten back down. He is as brave as he can be, knowing his father's name, but he never knew his father, so he is not yet the ruler he can be.

Telemachus will understand everything though, and will get his chance to do everything his father wanted, when Odysseus comes home. I know he will.

* * *

Ithaca: a word which, for Odysseus, must be a holy mantra is to me a dead weight falling off my tongue. I want to go home, not continue living in this prison.

* * *

Over the ten years since the war at Troy ended, I have waited. I have waited for Odysseus to come home. I have waited for news of his whereabouts. I have waited for news of his death. I have waited for the suitors to finally grow tired and leave. I have waited for my love and my need for Odysseus to finally fade away so I could at least exist in peace. I have waited to die rather than stay alive in this agony with my husband and my son gone. I have never received what I was waiting for.

Anything, any news, any event, would be better than waiting in this agonizing limbo on Ithaca.

Still, I will hope. Without hope what is there?

* * *

_Thanks for reading! Please review, I'd love to hear any of your thoughts!_

_Wishing you the best, Terra_


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